Thread: Why do so many foreign billionaires want to make their home in Britain

Originally Posted by panama hat

Tough choice . . . Jail or Britain . . .

Sorry out of ammo.....

Thaksin may well change his mind after he gets his first tax bill. Seems most of the British billionaires have left for that very reason.

^
Thaksin won't be a British billionaire he will be a foreign billionaire.
With a good accountant he won't suffer too much tax.

Britain's billionaires - the top 20 revealed

Barbara Davies, Daily Mail
7 March 2008, 3:10pm
Reader comments (9) | Calculate

This week Forbes magazine published its latest guide to the super-rich - and it's boom time for billionaires. There are now thought to be 1,125 of them worldwide - that's 179 more than a year ago. The average age is 61, and 48 of them are under 40 years old.

There are 48 billionaires (35 are British) living here, making the UK Europe's super-rich capital. Here we reveal the secrets of the 20 richest people in Britain.
Top spot: Tycoon Lakshmi Mittal
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1. Lakshmi Mittal, nationality: Indian, age 57, worth $45bn (£22.6bn).

A mere £125,000 is small change to this Calcutta-born steelmaker. But that was the sum that cost Tony Blair a slice of his political reputation when it emerged that he'd backed Mittal's takeover of a Romanian steel company just months after Mittal's 'generous' donation to Labour Party funds. He owns the 'Taj Mittal' in London's Kensington - complete with Turkish baths, ballroom and jewelled pool - which he bought from F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone for £57m.




2. Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor and family, British, 56, worth $14bn (£7bn).

The 6th Duke of Westminster's ancestors bought up vast tracts of Mayfair and Belgravia, as well as estates in Lancashire, Cheshire and Scotland, when they could be purchased for relatively small sums. Despite being married with four children, Gerald was exposed by a Sunday newspaper last year after hiring four prostitutes in six weeks.

3. Hans Rausing, Swedish, 82, worth $10bn (£5bn).

Every time you buy a pint of milk in one of his Tetra Pak cartons, you're making him slightly richer. Has a 900-acre estate in Wadhurst, East Sussex, and homes in the Bahamas and Sweden. Rausing has a taste for vintage cars and raising deer. Married with three children, he was knighted in 2006 for services to charity.

4. Philip and Cristina Green, British, 56, $8.4bn (£4.2bn).

Perma-tanned Philip Green - owner of Topshop and the huge Arcadia clothing group - likes to flaunt his wealth. Whether it is huge parties in the Bahamas, rubbing shoulders with Kate Moss, a private £20million Gulfstream jet or his luxury £32million Benetti yacht, he has outgrown his working-class roots. Having left school at 15, he and wife Cristina are said to live in a London hotel but spend enough time in tax haven Monaco to avoid paying UK tax.

5. Leonard Blavatnik, US, 50, worth $8bn (£4bn).

Fled the former Soviet Union in 1978, aged 21, as a penniless activist. After attending Harvard Business School he launched industrial holding company Access Industries in 1986. Made his fortune acquiring stakes in Russia's newly-privatised companies. Owns a £50million, ten-bedroom, nine-bathroom house in London's Kensington Palace Gardens.

6. John Fredriksen, Cypriot, 63, worth $8bn (£4bn).

This Norwegian-born welder's son is the world's most prolific oil tanker owner thanks to his control of Frontline Ltd. Made his fortune moving crude oil through the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war. Now widowed, he collects Norwegian art. Turned down a £105m offer for his ten-bedroom Chelsea home from Chelsea FC boss Roman Abramovich.

7. Charlene de Carvalhoheineken, Dutch, 53, worth £7.3bn.

The brewery heiress who reaches parts other billionaires can't - she inherited her 25% stake in the Heineken fortune six years ago. Loves photography, music and architecture, and is a member of St Moritz's elite Corviglia Ski Club. Lives in Chelsea with investment banker husband Michel de Carvalho - who appeared as an Arab boy in David Lean's epic Lawrence of Arabia - and their five children.


8. Anil Agarwal, Indian, 54, worth $6bn (£3bn)

Metals and mining magnate who chairs London-based firm Vedanta Resources. Married with two children and living in Mayfair, he has donated $1bn to Vedanta University in Eastern India.

9. David and Simon Reuben,British, worth $5.5bn (£2.7bn)

David, 63, and Simon Reuben, 60, built up their fortunes in property and metals trading, including buying half of Russia's aluminium industry in the economic chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. They own huge parts of London - including 1.8m sq ft of commercial space in London's Paddington. David, lives in the same West Kensington house he has owned for 20 years. Simon lives in Monaco.


10. Charles Cadogan and family, British, 71, worth $4.7bn (£2.36bn).

Inherited 300-yearold property portfolio covering 90 acres of land from Harrods in Knightsbridge to the Thames. But he has a brain too - began his career at merchant bank Schroder Wagg before moving into the family business. Married his third wife, Dorothy, in 1994, three children, and lives in £20million home in one of several Chelsea roads named after his family.

11. Lev Leviev, Israeli, 52, $4.5bn (£2.26bn)

The world's largest diamond cutter and polisher is also the new owner of the UK's most expensive - and possibly most tasteless - home - the £32million Palladio, complete with gold-plated indoor pool. Owns dozens of properties in New York including the New York Times Building. Married to wife Olga and has a daughter.

12. Richard Branson, British, 57, worth $4.4bn (£2.2bn)

Publicity-obsessed entrepreneur - hoping to fly into orbit sometime soon with his space travel venture. Founded Virgin 37 years ago as a mail-order record retailer. Virgin brand now covers 360 companies, including Virgin Atlantic Airways and Virgin Trains. Married to second wife Joan Templeman, two children.


13. Simon Halabi, British, 58, worth $4bn (£2bn).

Reclusive Syrian-born investor started as director of a UK property firm in the 1980s. Owns the Naval and Military Club in Piccadilly, a £3million house in Mayfair and £25million Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire which he's planning to turn into the UK's first six-star hotel.

14. Bernard Ecclestone, British, 77, worth $3.7bn (£1.8bn).


The pint-sized racing supremo is towered over by his statuesque model wife Slavica Radic. Started his working life aged 16 at a gasworks in South-East London to fund his motorcycle hobby, Bernie built up a staggering fortune through Formula 1 racing - pioneering the sale of its TV rights in the 1970s. A scandal ensued after he donated £ 1m to the Labour Party in 1997 and the Government subsequently exempted F1 racing from a ban on tobacco advertising. The donation was later returned.

15. Bjorgolfur Thor Bjorgolfsson, Icelandic, 41, worth $3.5bn (£2.25bn).

The youngest entry on this list owns homes in Romania, Scandinavia, Spain and Turkey as well as London where he lives with his film producer girlfriend. Co-founded Bravo brewery in Russia and sold its Botchkarov brand to Heineken in 2002. Used that profit to invest in a Bulgarian telecommunications company and Icelandic pharmaceuticals company.

16. Evgeny Shvidler, American, 44, worth $3.3bn (£1.66bn). Best pals with Roman Abramovich, he's a partner in Millhouse LLC, which manages assets owned by the Chelsea FC boss and associates. Shvidler took control of oil firm Sibneft in 1995 and sold it back to Russians for £8bn a decade later. Lives in a £37m house in Belgravia - with leather floors and an underground pool - with his wife and five children.

17. David and Frederick Barclay, both 73, British, worth $3.1bn (£1.56bn).

Reclusive twin brothers who own the Telegraph group, born in London to Scottish parents who had 10 children. Left school at 16 and joined the accounts department of General Electric before becoming painters and decorators. Made fortune converting old London boarding houses into hotels. Currently own Littlewoods home shopping company and a stake in Intercontinental Hotels Group. Live on their own private Channel island, Brecqhou.


18. Nadhmi Auchi, British, 70, worth $2.9bn (£1.46bn).

Married with four children, Auchi settled in London in 1980 after fleeing Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Made his fortune as a go-between negotiating with major oil companies and the stateowned oil fields in the Gulf. Married with four children, he donates money to charities that repatriate young boys forced to race camels outside Pakistan.

19. Mikhail Gutseriev, Russian, 50, worth $2.6bn (£1.31bn).

Bit of a mystery man, he quit Russia for London last year after claiming authorities were colluding with business rivals to force the sale of his oil company. Then was accused of failure to pay taxes and violating the terms of oil licences. Born in North Ossetia, to where his Ingush family - an ethnic group from the North Caucasus - were deported after World War II, Gutseriev later became president of state oil company Slavneft. Dismissed before privatisation but later bought a number of small Russian oil firms which he united into RussNeft. London address is unknown - even to his friends.


20. John Whittaker, 66, worth $2.5bn (£1.25bn).

Owner of Manchester's Trafford Centre, he spent 30 years building up Peel Holdings which also owns Clydeside in Scotland, the Manchester Ship Canal and Liverpool John Lennon Airport. Has a stake in Pinewood Studios. A devout Catholic, he is separated from his wife Patricia. He owns Billown Mansion on the Isle of Man and has four grown-up children.


• Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club, is at number 15 on the global list with $23.5bn (£11.75bn). He is listed as a resident of Russia. •

By Paul Maidment, Forbes.com
December 22 2006
There are 24 British citizens on our most recent annual list of the world's richest people. And 32 of the world's richest people list the UK as their place of residence.

Twenty-one appear on both lists, with the Duke of Westminster being the highest ranking British-based billionaire, ranked number 100 overall and the fourth richest man in the UK after Lakshmi Mittal at number five, Roman Abramovich at number 11 and Hans Rausing at number 56.

While his day job is as assistant chief of the UK's defence staff responsible for reservists, the Duke of Westminster’s fortune comes from his privately held family company, the Grosvenor Group, with £9.1 billion of real estate assets around the world under management at the turn of the year, including 300 acres of prime Mayfair and Belgravia property in central London.

• In pictures: the UK's Billionaires
• In pictures: London's billionaires
• In pictures: the world's billionaires
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Ex-pat billionaires
The three British billionaire ex-pats are retailer Philip Green, or more exactly his wife Christina (though they count as one for the purposes of our list); Clive Calder, the South African born ex-record-label tycoon who discovered Britney Spears; and currency trader-turned-investor Joseph Lewis. They live in Monaco, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas respectively.

Now here's the twist: while those three places have long had a certain tax appeal to the wealthy, many of the non-Brit billionaires based in the UK, such as Mittal, Abramovich and Rausing, are attracted by the UK's own emerging reputation as a tax haven with good schools, nice homes and safe streets.

And while the foreign-born take advantage of a well-known tax provision for non-domiciled residents that allows those who live in the UK for some but not all the time be taxed only on their UK earnings, it seems that the legions of financial advisers that exist in Britain's billionaire support ecosystem can make the UK hospitable to home-grown wealth, too.

Tax efficient
According to a newly published study by accountancy firm Grant Thornton and commissioned by the Sunday Times newspaper, British billionaires paid income tax totaling £14.7 million on their £126 billion combined fortunes last year, and only a handful paid any capital gains tax.

Grant Thornton estimated that three in five billionaires paid no personal income taxes, although they would have paid indirect taxes such as VAT and council tax. Business income would have been tucked away in offshore trusts and companies. Most of the rest who did pay taxes would have paid themselves in dividends rather than with a salary. Dividends are taxed at an effective rate of 25% rather than the 40% higher rate of income tax.

Minimising income tax
Accepting that there is a degree of guesswork in the numbers given that neither individual tax returns nor the details of more arcane tax shelters are public documents, but taking them at their face value, we estimate that Britain's billionaires paid an effective income tax rate of barely 0.4%.

We are assuming a conservative 7% rate of return on the capital. If you are a billionaire, you probably have the financial nous or can afford the financial advisers to beat that.

We also allocated the combined wealth of the billionaires between those living at home and abroad in proportion to their numbers and switched Green and Formula One motor racing chief Bernie Eccelstone to the non-domiciled tally. Although living in the UK they take full tax advantage of having non-resident wives. We calculate that these adjustments cut the collective taxable fortune of true-Brit billionaires to £49 billion, throwing off £3.4 billion of annual income.

Those billionaires are clearly effective at sheltering their income from the tax man. UK residents and those domiciled with UK companies will often draw out of their companies only what they need, and they will accumulate capital at corporate tax rates with a long-term plan to realise it at a 10 % rate using the UK's business-taper rules. The rules progressively reduce capital gains taxes on long-held assets, or during a five-year period overseas, which might be an option for a peripatetic billionaire such as Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Group entrepreneur with a zest for business matched only by his flair for self-promotion and love of globetrotting. How high does a balloon have to be before the tax man counts it as being out of the country?

The Inland Revenue forgoes a nominal billion pounds in income tax on the basis of our interpretation of Grant Thornton's figures, Critics of the UK's tax regime point to this and to the social cost of rising house prices, especially in London and the south-east of England, and of widening wealth disparities, to argue that the tax regime should change.

But as Mike Warburton, the Grant Thornton partner in London involved in compiling the survey, points out: "There is no need for many of these individuals to stay here. Even if we changed the rules, their offshore structures are already in place so very little additional tax would be collected."

Offset against that the value-added tax receipts on the goods and services those billions of pounds of capital imported tax free are spent on and corporate taxes, which Warbuton says, "will be considerable in some cases" plus the taxes paid and jobs created within the support system, from bankers to gardeners. This all adds up to sufficient income, it must be assumed, to keep Britain's officials minded not to change the rules.

Originally Posted by jandajoy

GAS BILL ALERT Gas bills are rising but the best 'cap' deals are gone. See: - Latest advice - Comparison tool

GAS BILL ALERT

Gas bills are rising but the best 'cap' deals are gone. See:
- Latest advice
- Comparison tool

Fascinating.

Originally Posted by momo8

Fascinating.

Isn't it just